is it just me?

allegedly my in-laws spent 18 hours cleaning their house before we got there. if this is true, and we will assume that it is, I am completely terrified of what that place looked like 18.5 hours before. the house that we entered was not what I would have described as clean. but after spending three days there, what is even more hive-inducing is the complete and total lack of organization. there are some lessons here: there is a reason why people do not put coffee filters and spoons in the same place. shelves are your friends. refrigerators are for food. it is better if the food is visible and not encased in seven old plastic grocery bags. people have trash cans for a reason. you know, that kind of thing. and while my less than stellar housekeeping is well documented here, my house feels like an effing shrine to Mr. Clean after that place. That said, the visit was not half bad. I was a little afraid when I casually asked on Thanksgiving morning how long it took to cook a turkey and my stepmother-in-law first looked at me as if to say "hmm...that's a good question!" I had visions of us sinking our teeth into some raw turkey at 8 o'clock that night, but no, salmonella-free Thanksgiving was served at 5 pm sharp. And the food was good! Yay for that, since bad food on a holiday that is all about food is really a drag.

On Friday evening we had a little birthday celebration for me and my sister-in-law, as our birthdays are recent and a week apart. My grandmother-in-law (GIL) was put in charge of the cake. Making the frosting for the cake was the big event of her day, and we spent quite a bit of time discussing it. She also kept saying that she wanted 'the girls' (that's me and my SIL) to decorate it. My GIL is 85 which means she lived through the depression which means that she is violently allergic to wasting anything, throwing anything away, and spending more than $20 on anything for any reason. She thinks Wal-Mart is fabulous because it is very cheap and she is from Arkansas, as is Wal-Mart. She loves to tell you about the cheap phone cards she gets at Sam's and the pie she found on clearance for $1.48 (mmmm....). She made a behemoth of a cake. It involved three BOXES of cake mix, which are made into sheet cake and piled on top of one another. This thing was massive. Finally it was frosted and ready for decorating, and she brought out no fewer than five tubes of Cake-Mate frosting, mostly unopened. My SIL started cutting them open, and while that stuff is pretty nasty when fresh, you could tell that this was not new frosting. It had taken on many of the characteristics of cement, and did not appear to be even remotely related to a food product. So my SIL discovers that this frosting may be SIX YEARS past the expiration and wisely decides that perhaps we should not put it on the cake. My GIL is somewhat devastated by this news, and inspects it. You can tell she thinks we are being foolish and wasteful. My SIL offers to throw away the toxic cement but GIL says she'll take it home because "they have too much trash already". But I know the truth: she is going to take it home and she is going to use it. Because she paid good money for that frosting, and there's no need to throw it away. Never mind that she bought it on clearance while Clinton was in office, that is perfectly good frosting and she will just whip up a cake for her friends and that will be that. Having lived to the age of 85 we can only hope that is not what kills her.

GIL also bought a present for Baby Lizard. It is a doll that makes really scary noises. GIL thinks it is fantastic that the doll makes a sucking sound when you put something in its mouth. I find this totally disturbing, even more so since that rotates with crying, laughing, and this scary little mutant saying 'mama'. eek. So, we showed it to Baby Lizard who isn't really very interested in dolls. She immediately put the fake bottle in her own mouth, but fortunately she did not seem very interested in figuring out how to make the doll make noise. So, yay for that. It is worth noting that on her last visit GIL bought Baby Lizard a weird little stuffed red wing blackbird that 'sings' when you squeeze it. Apparently weird electronic noises really strike her fancy! Fabulous.

I was back at work today and everyone wanted to ask about my Thanksgiving which really has to be one of the most boring holidays to discuss. So, like a good Midwesterner I spent a solid portion of my work day talking about driving through snow on the way to Iowa. And I got to hear about strawberry "salad" which apparently involves jello, some cream cheese (?), frozen strawberries and something else. Trust me, nowhere on earth is the word 'salad' used more loosely than in Wisconsin. Nowhere.

In other Wisconsin news, a Milwaukee police officer was recently deported since they figured out that he had assumed his dead cousin's identity in order to pose as a citizen. Funny, I guess I always figured that background checks for police officers included investigating things like whether or not you are alive. I feel so safe now. While it seems like he's a good guy, I would have to say that entering public service on a fake identity has to, in retrospect, seem like a poor decision. good night.